


Ring Like Silver, Ring Like Gold

by ameliajean



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliajean/pseuds/ameliajean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The turn of time feels like fever dreams to him now; short bursts of sorrow and anticipation running together as if they've been left out in the rain.</p><p>
  <i>Ring like silver, ring like gold</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Ring out those ghosts on the Ohio</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Ring like clear day wedding bells</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Were we the belly of the beast, or the sword that fell?</i>
</p><p>"Stable Song" // Gregory Alan Isakov</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ring Like Silver, Ring Like Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this photo](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mf09spk7WR1qfbofi.jpg).

Arthur dreams of drowning; of weight settled heavy in his chest and air bubbles escaping his lips, of watching them rise to the shrouded air above. He wakes with the taste of saltwater on his tongue. For a moment he is disoriented, as the slices of light shining through the blinds contort around a shadowed figure. The figure stills and allows Arthur a moment to open his eyes fully and adjust them to the dim morning sun.

And then it's that familiar voice, cadence, rhythm. And then he's home.

"Arthur."

Like muscle memory, Arthur smiles; that smile with bared teeth and lines at the tight-pulled corners of his eyes, like he can't believe how lucky he is just to be breathing.

This is the third day in a row he's lost his bearings between evening and morning.

"I will never get used to this," he says softly, reaching out a hand.

Merlin takes it in his own and sits on the edge of the mattress. Arthur sits up a bit so he's propped up by the excess of pillows on their bed. Merlin's bed. His bed? They didn't necessarily elect to discuss any of this. The moment Arthur opened his eyes, body sprawled on the wet grass, memory flooded back and all he could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears; the beat of his heart. That was enough.

"You seemed to adjust to this memory foam mattress rather quickly," Merlin says, laughter in his voice. "And my most comfortable socks."

Arthur swallows down the pressure at the back of his throat.

"No, I," his brow knits together in disbelief, but he's still got that smile on. "This."

He presses his fingers into Merlin's palm.

Merlin doesn't know how to respond; how to put into words the fact that _this_ was always his, always theirs, but never quite right in its timing.

"I'm about to put the kettle on, and I'm going to ask you to do something ridiculous, so get up and get dressed."

"I've only just-"

Merlin rolls his eyes and lets go of his hand. "Don't make me wait, Arthur."

(Arthur decides that he'll allow him to use that particular form of guilt exactly three more times before pinning him down and teaching him just exactly how painstaking it can be to wait.)

He takes a hot shower and watches the steam collect against the glass doors, dragging his finger through the condensation to make patterns. He finds himself doing this rather frequently: getting lost in his thoughts, knowing there's so much to learn but wanting to spend all of his time (whatever of it he's got) in this flat with his best friend. When the memories resurface, they're never of the wounds or the battle. They're all him. They're all Merlin's kind eyes overflowing, his fingers pressed to tender flesh, the shudder of his chest each time Arthur felt himself slipping into that dark slumber.

It's astonishing how none of this feels out of place.

Arthur dresses in the clothes left for him in the chest of drawers, as if they'd been folded and kept in expectation of a guest. Or someone coming home.

When he meets Merlin in the main room, he takes a seat opposite him and leans over the low table to take his cup of tea. He sips at it and makes an approving noise deep from his throat, making a mental note to ask Merlin to teach him how to make it. (If there's one thing he's determined not to become, it's the man who allowed the Earth's most powerful sorcerer to boil his bathwater.)

Merlin holds out a cylindrical piece of cardboard wrapped in shining gold foil and offers the other end to Arthur.

"Pull."

"What, I just-" Arthur narrows his eyes.

"It's a tradition. You pull the end of the cracker with someone, and if you get the bigger half, you keep what's inside."

"It's a game, then?"

Merlin shrugs. "I suppose. Come on, pull... I have a feeling you're going to win."

They pull at either end and Arthur flinches when it pops.

"You didn't warn me about that."

They laugh a bit because he's stared down death and loss and all the world's evil but somehow managed to flinch at the popping of a Christmas cracker. It's moments like these when they forget what they were (or, rather, _when_ they were) because this feels as much like home as those old stone walls.

Arthur's realizing quickly that walls don't make a home at all.

"You get the lot," Merlin says, smiling. He pulls something from the cracker and unfolds it.

"Toys for children," Arthur says incredulously, sifting through the bits of plastic. "Honestly, you haven't changed at all."

Just as Arthur looks up, Merlin places the paper crown on his head.

Their flat becomes so quiet in that instant the cars can be heard on the street below, and the birds just outside in the overgrown grey alder tree, and the low humming from the refrigerator.

"It's you and I, isn't it?" Arthur catches Merlin's wrist. "Everything changes. The entire world changes. Everybody we... there's nobody else now. It's always, only us."

He nods affirmatively.

Arthur continues, his grip softening as Merlin's hand comes to rest on his chest. "If it's always meant to be us..."

Yes, he's beginning to understand.

It isn't that _this_ is new, yet so very much the same. It's that it is always, and forever, and turns with time as everything else crumbles to rock and dust. That weight in his chest so many ages ago wasn't the loss of that which he covets above all else. It was the slow creep of eternity into his lungs, his bones, his breath.

"I've had lifetimes to consider this, Arthur. If you need time to adjust to the idea-"

Merlin's hand falls away once more and the twisting in Arthur's gut only serves to affirm his instinct that this is quite literally the only thing in the entire world he'd die to keep.

He sifts through the plastic toys and pulls a garish red ring from the mess.

"I, uh, I find that I don't know what I ought to say," he slips the plastic ring onto Merlin's index finger and their eyes meet. "But I know that we were meant for this from the start."

A choked laugh bubbles from Merlin's throat. "You've only been back three days."

Arthur stares at him for what seems like as many ages as have passed since the forests of Camelot, and the waters of Avalon, and the hearthfire-dotted night skies of centuries past.

His voice is thin; quiet. "From the _start_."

Merlin slides his fingers into the hair at the nape of Arthur's neck and pulls them together for a slow, chaste press of lips. When they wrap one another in a familiar embrace, Merlin digs his nose into the hollow of Arthur's shoulder and chuckles a bit.

"You tried to take my head off with a mace," he says, rather matter-of-fact.

Arthur laughs as well. "Okay, _very nearly_ the start. Don't be an ass."

"Don't be a prat."

"Don't speak to your betrothed in such a manner," he says, acutely aware that the moniker 'king' no longer applies.

They spend a short while like this, comfortable in one another's arms on a Sunday morning, and Merlin feels his eyes prickle when well-worn hands smooth his hair; they tangle a bit at his temple and rest there, the contact comfortable like sun in spring. The turn of time feels like fever dreams to him now; short bursts of sorrow and anticipation running together as if they've been left out in the rain.

Later that evening, Merlin takes Arthur to a pub in celebration of the beginning, and the middle, and never again the end. As ages pass, they'll stand these tests of time together: united as they should be. As they were always meant to be, from very nearly the start.

Arthur is delighted by the way the city's fairy lights shine and how the pub's patrons seem so much like those he knew before.

And there's this white box with an odd word splashed across the side: _photobooth_

"Merlin," he drawls, the ale warming him through. "Show me what this does."

They abandon their drinks and Merlin nabs a few pair of sunglasses from some lovely inebriated women at the next table ("Just for a tic," he'd said, as Arthur peeked through the booth's curtain).

They share a quick kiss just before Merlin adorns them with the glasses as if it's the easiest thing they've ever done, and barely pause afterward to consider it.

That night, an arm slung around his chest, Arthur dreams of nothing at all.


End file.
